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impses 
Universal Eyolution 



' W it i i 



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Copyrighted )905 by 
J. J. JEWETT. 

Address Author, care of 
[MGARDT PUBLISHING CO 

116 North Broadway 

Los Angeles 
Cal. 



Baumgaidt Print, 116 N. Broadway. Lot Angelei. Cal. 






GLIMPSES OF UNIVERSAL 
EVOLUTION. 



By J. J. JEWETT. 



OF FIRST CAUSE. 

He who affirms first cause, or final loss, 
May likewise tell of parallels that cross ; 

For by our knowledge we can not detect, 
A cause that is not also an effect: 

Nor can we reason, or conceive, the fad, 
That out of nothing something may be had: 

Nor does a sacred superstition read- 
As modems often teach the ancient creed— 

That out of nothing came a power supreme 
And made a universe, as one might dream : 

For, from the water, says the holy writ, 

The gods produced the earth and fashioned it; (i) 

And hammered out a cover, arching o'er. 
To keep the upper waters from its floor. (2) 

Thus was the nothing-myth unknown to men. 
Till later years, but none can say just when 



(1) "And the spirit of the gods moved upon the face of the waters." 
Commentators on Genesis admit that in the Hebrew the deistic noun is 
plural — Elohim, not El or Eloah. Their explanations are conjectural and 
immaterial. 

(2") According to John Fiske and other linguistic scholars the Hebrew 
for "made," in this connection, signifies something hammered out. The 
word "firmament" we know implies a solid and stable construction. We 
also know that the appearance of solidity is an optical illusion, and that 
at no special distance from the earth is there any distinguishing change 
in the constitution of the interspatial medium. 



'Twas grafted firmly on religious faith, 
A stultifjdng dogma, fraught with scath. 

The bent of mind all matter to reduce 
To unity, has this belief -excuse : 

That Nature was created for the race- 
Not that it sprung from out of Nature's face; 

And that design engaged a mind unique 
Which all things have a tendency to seek. 

The Brahman, Buddhist, and Confucian strive, 
In their own ways, to keep such thoughts alive— 

The Christian, Pantheist, and patient Jew, 
Believe and teach the same idea, too : 

And instinct, hence, ancestrally acquired, 
Makes unity, demonstrate, much desired. 

But nature does not teach regard for man. 
Nor unity of substance, nor a plan. 

Ever consistent with its precedents. 
It follows not a course a mind invents— 

It multiplies not substance, nor transmutes, 
But pays respect to all its attributes. 

For substance we can not conceive a cause. 
But only think it is, and ever was. 

The elements were ever, never first; 

Who seeks their origin, by thought is curst. 

They may be infinite; they are not one, 

Else one would be, and nothing would be done. 

All stress, all energy, all motion fail! 
Unthinkable! as is the Nothing-tale! 

Matter existent is an endless chain ; 
To Chemic Elements the links pertain. 

But in all Matter there was ever Stress— 
A potency no language can express- 
Eternal action— principle of change— 
The restless energies that rearrange. 

Matter and Stress— the two in one combined. 
Are Nature called, and It is all we find. 



To go beyond this Nature some do plod, 

To find a Thing which they call Mind or God; 

And clothe the Undiscovered (save in thought), 
In Nature's Stress ; and say their God from naught 

Created Nature. Let them rather say: 
"Nature created Mind, and Mind, God-sway." 



A WORKING SCAFFOLD. 

But he who thinks must have his transient goals, 
Both for the thought and subject he unrolls. 

So Nature we initiate, forsooth, 
Although it had no origin in truth. 

For this imagine an existent state 
In which creator waited to create: 

In the Beginning Elemental mist 

Was omnipresent— Thing did not exist— 

An ocean of negation with no shore. 
That, surfaceless, no tide or billow bore: 

The Possible within it was in thrall; 
Deep darkness, cold and silent, covered all. 

The Heavens and Earth were nihil and unmade; 
Chaos and order void and unessayed. 

There was no When, nor was there any Where; 
No Time, nor Place, nor Vacuum, nor Air; 

But in the Elemental Atoms lurked 

The great Creator, which had never worked. 

All space was uniform with spaceless mass. 
More imperceptible than subtlist gas : 

And this was Nature, without part or sign— 
A womb, without a boundary or line. 

Yet, in the waste jejune, at perfect rest, 
Were gods and goddesses not manifest. 

Repulsion shrouded each atomic point, 
Nor was there center, nucleus, or joint. 

Omnipotent each particle within. 
Was Gravity, without an origin. 



Repulsion weakened— Gravity did not— (3) 
Motion and Concrete Matter were begot. 

Motion and Matter danced a turbine course: 
Repulsion met them with a hostile force, 

And caused their vortex field through space to shift, 
While th^ waltzed towards its axis in the drift, 

Cencentrating atoms in their spiral track, (^ 
For sun-star embryos in darkness black. 

Now Motion took upon him various forms. 
And played with Matter in electric storms; 

Then changed himself to Galor and as Heat, 
A scroll in darkness traced with burning feet: 

Again he masked as pale Crepusculum, 
And jollied Matter on the light to come. 

The Atoms clustered into molecules 

And cloud-corpuscles, dimly guised in gules: 

Quicker and deeper in the clouded maze. 

The dance was urged— and there was bom a blaze. 

Staid Gravity became its fostering nurse— 
A brilliant sun-star lit the Universe. 

Motion and Matter god and goddess were; 
He, ever present with, and joined to, her: 

From her there issued Spheres that gyrant spun; 
He flung them into Cosmos, one by one: 

The eldest bom put forth his strength and bent 
The flight of others to eccentrics pent. 

The new-bom Sphere a nimbus was, at first : 
By Gravity's incessant pressure nursed, 

It grew in beauty and substantial frame, 
And proudly donned a dress of whitest flame. 



(3) A break must be imagined at some point in the balance of forces-, 
in order to conceive of motion. But conditions and relations assumed in 
this section are not claimed to be rationally speculative, but purely fanci- 
ful. They serve, however, to introduce the reasonable conjectures that 

fOllOTV. 

(4) Concentering atoms do not approach in direct or right lines, aa 
observations on the motions of fluids teach. 



THE BIRTH AND YOUTH OF EARTH. 

The fiery sun-stars to the worlds gave birth, 
And one, among the offspring, was the Earth. 

Though bom as one, the Earth was really twin; 
Its sister was the Moon, concealed within: (5) 

But Earth was quite tempestuous, when young, 
And from its breast the lesser sister flung : 

The weaker to the stronger could but yield. 
But never c^ised upon it power to wield. 

The Earth was like its mother, bright as gold, 
And hotter than a forge, a thousand fold; 

A volume vast of Elemental kings, 

With queens consorting to produce all things ; 

And chief among the kings was Oxygen 
Who had affinity for every queen. 

The superheat took other forms of Stress : 
The Elements began to coalesce: 

Oxyds were bom to every queen on high. 
And formed an army that possessed the sky. 

Ever descending to the depths below. 
To plunge ui darkness and arise to glow. 

To Hydrogen, the queen of Ether State, 
Was Water bom, by Oxygen the Great. 

The Earth became incased in thin veneer, 
Beneath a pond'rous, turbid atmosphere. 

Earth and its atmosphere were racked with tides. 
Enormous swells like moving mountain sides. 

The Earth's veneer of metals, hot and hard, 
Was cmshed like wafers or a paper card. 

The thin veneer became a thickened shell, 
And aqueous torrents on its surface fell. 

The sublimates, from molten rocks escaped, 
That hitherto Earth's pliant form had draped. 

In buoyant fumes opaque with mineral spicks, 
(Which Sol's red-pointed darts could not transfix). 



(5) If the theory of planet-building by successive accretion of 
meteors is correct, the moon may be young instead of old, with not ye* 
matter enough for pressure to reduce it to a fluid state. 



Were washed to earth, precipitated dust, 

And heaven was cleared of lunbrous grit and rust. 

The Earth, inside its shelly cover, shrunk, 
The shell itself, in places, slightly sunk; 

The water settled where the shell was lower, 
And then came into being Sea and Shore. 

Brother and sister, king and queen were they— 
The Shore and Sea— attired in steam and spray. 

The great, near Moon above the Sea oft swung, 
And o'er the land the thermal waters flung: 

The warmer land, with rough, resilient rib. 
Threw back the deluge to its cradle crib, 

And, reeking with the vapor of the tide. 

Swelled 'neath the Moon's salaming sweep with pride. 

The ocean waters were of vast extent, 
But occupied a shallow crustal dent, 

Not deeper than a hair is to the head. 
It grows upon, in thickness, yet so spread 

It covered all the Earth, save here and there, 
Some island mountain bathed itself in air. 

The Continents were not, but later rose. 

Thro' Earth's successive, lengthened, travail throes. 

They lived a life of constant wear and rack ; 
They sank into the ocean, and came back. 

With faces new; and times, and times again. 
Till they became the habitats of men. 



INTRODUCTION OF LIFE. 

The Sea had many subject Elements, 
As aids in shaping aqueous events. 

To her came vassal chiefs from Heaven and 
From all the dark abysses of the land— 

Potassa, Soda, Calcium; anon 

Came Carbon, Chlorine, Ferrum, Silicon, 

Alumin, Sulphur, Bromine, Phosphorus, 
Azote, Magnesium— all these and plus. 

Alliances and wonderful combines 

Were formed within the compass of her lines ; 



And one was Colloid, specially endowed, 
Suspended as a hyalescent cloud— 

The promise of a potent working-guild. 
The destiny of which would be to build 

Organic structures such as yet were not, 
Whose unit part should be a cystic jot. 

With poles electric, contra poles to bind, 
To make all parts of sympathetic kind — 

Congeries of cylinders and globes. 
Distorted oft, or parted into lobes ; 

Whose monad host, one moment heart to heart, 
Were, by the next one, to be torn apart : 

An army coming in the flood of breath, 
And constantly retreating into death. 

The Sun became enamored of the Sea, 
And gave the Colloid cloud vitality— 

A power to cause things through itself to move, 
Its substance and condition to improve : 

A power to free the Carbon and Azote 
From their subjection to the Oxymote, 

And hold them in possession as its own- 
Add cell to cell, and cover zone with zone 

The Calcium and Silicon to take, 
And of them skeleton and testa make, 

While sending ions on from pole to pole— 
The quiddity of autocratic Soul, 

Or Life (if Life be thought the better term- 
Though words to frame the notion are infirm) — 

An allotrope of Death (the primal mode 
Of all activity)— an episode 

In Nature's chess— King Oxygen in check, 
And ever moving at the player's beck. 

Before one game of Nature's chess was done, 
Others were well in progress, or begun, 

By younger players, on each side aligned— 
One Vegetal, one Animal, in kind. 

One played with green, o'er checkered avenues; 
The other moved in red and lighter hues. 



Drop, now, the figure of a game, and note : 
The Animal was wedded to Azote— 

The Vegetal, for its domestic mate, 

To Carbon clung with constancy as great. 

The Animal forced Oxygen to bear 
The Carbon from its halls to outer air; 

And made the carrier's role to be, in chief, 
Prom that intruding guest to give relief. 

The Vegetal received the vagrant guest. 
And, by its aid, upreared a lofty crest: 

Its parts were toughened, with the storm to play, 
And indurated, to resist decay. 



THE EVOLUTION OP CELLS. 

Life forms, at first, were spheres too small for eyes, 
Or vitreous lens, to view their vital size; 

But grew, and multiplied, in many forms. 

To suit the changing course of time and stonns ; 

And took on all imaginable shapes, 
Prom mucid microplasts to oaks and apes. 

See how they started, when the smoke above 
The Sea had settled, and the Sun sent love 

The Colloid parted into film and juice. 
And thus began the process to produce 

Organic parts. The fecund juice, contained 
Within the cystic film, became engrained. 

'Twixt inward grains and outward grains arose 
A difference no vision could expose. 

Thus sex originated in the cell, 
Of grains invisible, in primal jell. 

Two diffmng grains united into one. 
And by their union was a cell begun. 

The newer cell developed as the first- 
Its grains united and the capsule burst. 

Each mated pair its simple cell evolved. 
Which granulated, ruptured, and dissolved. 

And thus, for ages, all biotic gains 

Have come from blending two attracted grains. 



Now, individual life had tenure timed: 
Anon, its monads with no pulses chimed: 

Its anions and ions ceased to spring, 
From pole to pole along the mystic ring : 

Its avenues and thoroughfares were still, 
And oxygen, unhindered, worked its will. 

And this was Death— the state we so much loathe- 
Yet Death with other life will Nature clothe. 



COMMUNISM OF CELLS. 

The cells cohered for common good, at length: 
Electric forces then had greater strength: 

New wants developed, with new power acquired: 
New organs to supply them were desired: 

Two cells among the mass became two ends. 
Anode and cathode, in this chain of friends. 

With functions special, but unlike, and these 
Evolved new shapes, to do their work with ease. 

But all the organs that arose for use 
Were aggregates of cells, attached or loose. 

The mouth, the eye, the brain, the heart, the blood, 
The leaf, the root, the flower, the fruit, the bud- 
All forms of Life that in the present are. 
Are groups of cells, and Man is cellular. 

New organs formed, as time and changes went, 
And organs formed were changed, to great extent, 

As Life progressed from low to highest grade, 
As Nature's workings new conditions made: 

For, only thus could Life perpetuate. 
And rise to higher function and estate. 

The life-sorts perished that refused to change. 
When Nature wrought conditions hard and strange. 

For most environments, from change derived. 
Some Life was modified, in ways, and thrived. 

Thus, species came, and genera, and class. 
All varying fruitage of the colloid mass. 



And all the forms of animals we know, 
And every plant of million kinds that grow, 

Have organs modified from older stock 

(Nor need the knowledge give to Man a shock). 

The cell became a chemist, at the start : 
It analyzed and synthetized with art. 

It drew in substance through its filmy face, 
And tore the atoms from their strong embrace; 

Some recombined, in ratios of its own, 
And some, set free and cast to the unknown. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 

The cell a sensibility possessed— 
A quality of Feeling, manifest 

In pushing out a part, to reach for spoil- 
To touch and overflow it, or recoil. 

The cell-commune could substance apprehend, 
With parts that had a function to that end. 

Sensation grew; and Feeling, more acute. 
Learned to distinguish large things from minute ; 

Learned sapid things, and so developed Taste 
(For Taste is consciously on Feeling based) ; 

Learned to detect the molecules afloat. 

In airy currents coursing through the throat— 

(For Smell, a progeny of Taste, arose 
Before were built the arches of the nose). 

Smell gave suspicion of things out of touch, 
And roused desire to know the place of such. 

Smell told but little of the distance, or 
In what direction was the thing sought for : 

Therefore, to feel afar, as 'twere, came Sight, 
And aided smelling by reflected light. 

The primal Eye showed motion, light and shade, 
But form distinct was not by it betrayed. 

A pellicle, a bulb of nerve, and ink, 
Without a lens, a globe, or lids to wink. 



Were all its parts. A little spot worn thin, 
A neural ganglion beneath the skin, 

With pigments thrown around it to protect 
From too much sun. The light and shade efifect 

Was vibrant energy unloosed, to pass 
From out the startled, ganglionic mass 

To locomotor parts ; and they obeyed 
The impulse to approach, or to evade. 

As shade and brightness showed the object moved, 
And want unmet, or fear, the stronger proved. 

The Eye amended Life, and Life rose high, 
And higher Life devolved more the Eye. 

It added parts, and made its office grand, 
And, of the senses, gave it chief command. 

And thus, the Eye came from concurring facts, 
Not by construction through designing acts; 

Else, it had been perfected in its prime, 

And not improved through million years of time : 

For, simple forms of Life have simple eyes, 
And eyes more complex as they higher rise. 

Now, there are motions of the air and ground. 
By Life perceived, and by the Ear, as sound; 

But oft by Feeling, as a jar or jolt. 

Say, from an earthquake, or a thunderbolt. 

Those animals the tremors strongest felt, 
With tenuous skin above the neural belt. 

Which was itself with wat'ry lymph o'erlaid. 
In which a crystaline concretion played 

(For such concretions in the lymph occurred, 
In some low animals that never heard). 

The thin integument, the neural zone. 

The lymph between them, with its crystal stone, 

Together formed the Ear : Coincidence 
Was thus the origin of hearing sense. 

The Ear evolved by small degree and mete. 
As forms of Life rose high and more complete : 

It came to be, of all the sense machines. 
Most complex, delicate; the passive means 



Of highest pleasures— language, music, mirth; 
Mind's broadest entrance door to truth and worth; 

Among the senses, of the special five. 
To sympathy and love the most alive. 

The deep emotions on its chords prevail. 
Though joy exulting, or the infant's wail. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

In Life zoonic, early, there were nerves— 
Electric conduits, built with gentle curves 

(Electro-forces like not angles well, 

And, sharply turned oft splutter and rebel). 

Electric currents pioneered the way, 
Ere Life began the nervous tracks to lay : 

Wave followed wave along the favored line. 
And left a trace, as paths are marked by Mne, 

(For electricity elects to go 

Where its first impulse finds a facile flow). 

Life filled the passage with peculiar stuff. 
With fatty oil and phosphorous enough 

To guide the current safely in its course. 
And hinder straying of the subtile force. 

Now, from its measured flow in mural roads. 
Sensation came, through changes at the nodes— 

For all the nerves had nodes through which they passed, 
Where cells of nervous matter were enmassed. 

Li modern days such nodes are ganglions called. 
Of which the most complete is bony walled. 

And styled the Brain, or The Encephalon— 
A group of ganglions on ganglion. 

Convergent nerves conducted to within; 
Emergent nerves led outward to the skin; 

And all of Life's exterior extent 

Had some that inward, some that outward, went, 

Regarding ganglions (of which was one. 
In which all roads were ended, or begun). 



Nerves spread like pilous brushes, in the nose; 
And in the eye, like petals of a rose; 

And in the ear, like legs of millipedes, 
When these articulates coil up as beads ; 

And in the mouth, like limbs of buttonball, 
Wide-branching from a column broad and tall; 

And in the skin, like feathers loosely edged. 
Or like the down of fowl when fully fledged. 

The inner Life had, also, nerves throughout, 
That all its parts ran over and about- 
Some ending in a ganglion, and some 
Beginning there, and going out therefrom. 

They were, in ways, not like the others, quite— 
Of flatter form, more chain-like, not so white; 

But served the purpose of their making well, 
Conditions of the inner Life to tell. 

And to transmit from ganglion or brain. 
The secret of avoiding death or pain. 



THE BRAIN AND REFLEX ACTION. 

Within brain ganglion were cells galore. 

Or rooms, with jell from ceiling to the floor. 

Each nerve convergent had a special room, 
In which it ended in potential gloom. 

In other special rooms, like those in size. 
Emergent nerves began in gloom, likewise. 

The rooms, or cells, were ranged in suits, or groups, 
As orderly as military troops; 

Each group containing both the kinds of cells. 
Which chimed, as 'twere, with harmony of bells: 

And, when an impulse from the outer world 
Arrived within, and through the jelly swirled, 

The cells within the special cluster shook, 
And other cells in some degree partook, 

And sent a signal out to parts concerned. 
The total animal the impulse learned, 

And learned its source; and, judging from the two. 
Its various organ parts knew what to do. 



Life's chemistry became most delicate; 
Electric subleties, discriminate; 

The gangflionic cells, so sensitive, 
The conscious animal desired to live. 

The contact of the Life with things outside, 
The pressure of the atmospheric tide, 

The temperature, the moisture, and the drouth, 
Dilute solutions in the throat and mouth, 

The molecules that in the air were poised, 
The motion waves that on the ear were noised. 

The quivers of the light that forms revealed— 
All— to the consciousness of Life appealed. 

And, "by their impact, changed electric states 
And attitudes of chemic ultimates. 

They getidered permutations numberless. 
Of order, forms of cells, and modes of str^s, 

Of long duration, but of slight degree, 
And, thus, began the house of Memory. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MIND AND INSTINCT. 

Now, when some act or object sent a thrill 
Along a nerve, some central cell to fill— 

A cell already overcharged with cares. 
In keeping monuments of old affairs — 

Another cell was added to contain 
Memorials that would for long remain. 

So, brain increased, as does the honeycomb. 
When ev'ry bee adds cera to the home; 

And Memory's house was like a living tomb, 
Where inmates leaped, as infants in the womb ; 

Where resurrections happened ev'ry hour. 
Not of the dead, but live, from slumber's bower. 

When waked too oft the dwellers only drowsed; 
And when too long neglected, unaroused. 

They slumbered heavily, and died, at last, 
But left remains, like fossils of the past. 



The rooms in Memory's house had many shelves 
Where cognate things were treasured by themselves. 

For countless time (though centuries were years), 
The animal placed there its wants and fears, 

Its failures, triumphs, methods and results, 
The causes of its habits or its cults. 

And, from examples on each graded shelf— 
Experiences stored— Life taught itself; 

And, thus, from educated Life there came 
What men call Instinct, when they give it name. 

Now, Instinct is Experience crystalized, 
From all the dead to all the live devised. 

Not all Experience became so fixed, 

In crystal form; some part of it was mixed 

With Fancy, Doubt, and Curiosity, 
Uncrystallizable, as yet, and free. 

This mobile mixture was an attribute 
Of greater vigor in the higher brute. 

Whose larg^t neural station was built up 
Within a bony cavity, or cup 

(By name applied, a cranium or head) ; 
Whose chief electric conduit safely led 

Through bones conjoined (by modems termed the spine). 
Extending from the station in a line. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL IDEAS. 

Now, all the objects that impressions left. 
And all the actions with the objects weft, 

The Life perceived as different, act from act. 
And thing from thing, as they were so, in fact; 

Yet, often with resemblances of kind: 
And, thus, began within the nascent Mind 

That tow 'ring tree that overtops its realm. 
With branches spreading like a giant elm— 



i'EB 11 1905 

Its germ, Experience; its root, the force 
To stir perception severed from its source; 

Its trunk, perceptions into concepts wrought; 
Its crown, comparing and constructive thought ; 

Its fruit, a knowledge of effect and cause. 
From uniformity of Nature's laws. 

Thus grew the tree of Intellect in Man, 

Of which the branches earth and heaven span. 

Yet sparse and seldom has the fruit matured. 
Although of many plagues and blightings cured: 

Exuding grubs of malice in it crawl. 
And make it early shrink, decay, and fall; 

And birds of superstition foul and peck 
Its fair exterior, and inward wreck; 

While legislation poisons, through the soil. 
With rank injustice, in desire for spoil. 

Such foes to perfect fruitage will not be. 
When men have learned the value of the tree : 

The burrowing worms will be almost suppressed; 
The birds of superstition will not rest 

Among its branches, nor its fruit assail; 
The poison in the soil, from greed, will fail; 

For, men will have their equal rights obtained, 
And wonder how they were so long enchained. 

Conformity to Nature's laws is good 
Man can not better govern, if he would. 

It means right living, justice, kindness, truth, 
Peace, happiness, long age, and healthy youth; 

Means industry, art, purpose, high design, 
The banishment of want and fear malign ; 

Means forethought without trouble, care uncursed 
With deadly apprehension of the worst; 

And, at the finis, dying without grief, 

That Life has been too lengthened or too brief. 



LB. I! ns 



